Hope is a force of nature.

The Discovery

Adam Sandler releases Happy Gilmore 2 on Netflix. I watch it with my family. I'm still not sure if it's actually funny or if the sheer absurdity of the celebrity cameos was what made it for me, but I had a good time. The final act of the movie is Sandler's character Happy Gilmore competing alongside four real life professional golfers that they asked to be in the movie to save real golf from the maxi tour. The actual plot doesn't matter, what does matter is that Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau, and Brooks Koepka are in the movie as themselves.

To establish my personal experience with professional golf at the time of watching this movie, I am exposed to it every so often when my dad watches it, so I am aware of who some golfers are. I don't recognize Koepka or DeChambeau, but I do recognize McIlroy as somebody who I have been hearing about for years and I understand that he is very good, and I recognize Scheffler as the guy who won the golf gold medal in Paris.

In the movie, before the regular golf versus maxi golf competition happens, the two teams face off and exchange some trash talk. The following exchange occurs. Apologies for the fact that this is me recording my tv but it gets the point across.

In case you're watching without sound, the subtitles are slightly inaccurate; Bryson doesn't just say "those are mine," he says "those are my titties." THOSE ARE HIS TITS!!!!!!!! I CANNOT STRESS THAT ENOUGH!!!!!!!!

You may be asking, why the fuck did he say that? I am asking that question, too. Did Adam Sandler write that in the script? Was this improv? If this was improv, what the fuck, why did he say that? In the context of Happy Gilmore 2's oc insert rpf, is this a background crack ship or is there actual merit to the Rory McIlroy/Bryson DeChambeau pairing with canon evidence? I had to dig deeper, because if there's something there, there could be interesting emotional weight added to the porn that is begging to be written about these guys.

Digging Deeper

First, Rory McIlroy.

Billed as a prodigy from literally the age of 9. Won three of the four golf majors pretty early on in his career, and finally won the Masters on his 17th attempt in 2025, making him the sixth ever man to win golf's Grand Slam. It was like Novak Djokovic finally winning the gold medal except Rory tried and failed way more times. Tiger Woods's little brother figure. Called off his engagement to Caroline Wozniacki over the phone. Wanted a divorce from his wife Erica in 2024 but apparently they worked it out. They have a daughter together, she's really cute. Was on the PGA Tour board for a while but stepped back so he could focus on golf. He's 5'9"/1.75m. Generally a well spoken and thoughtful guy. He also yelled at somebody in a parking lot at the Ryder Cup in 2023 because somebody's caddy was being distracting while he was playing and he took out his frustration afterwards at the first team USA guy he saw. He regrets doing that, though. Identifies as Northern Irish before anything else, but ended up representing Ireland at the Olympics. Sat in Casper Ruud's box during the first round of the US Open this year, and got to New York literally three hours after finishing playing his last round at the FedEx Cup, which is the pga's tour final and also in Atlanta. Has said he admires Roger, Rafa, and Novak. Really gets into the silly challenges his sponsors make him do for YouTube. My guy <3

As for Bryson DeChambeau, I was a little confused at first. I wasn't seeing his name when I was looking at stats and results and etc on the PGA Tour website, so I thought he just sucked real bad, but I had forgotten about the LIV Golf thing. Now, I remember hearing about it on the news when the split happened, but it took me a little bit of time to figure out that's where he was.

LIV Golf is Saudi Arabia throwing money in the air to create a new, allegedly better, tour. It's got a team format and 14 required events, whereas the PGA Tour is more like tennis where you have freedom to choose your schedule. LIV bought a lot of top golfers, including DeChambeau and Koepka, for a fuck ton of money. Apparently it's kinda falling off now and both of their contracts expire I think at the end of the next season, so who knows maybe they'll return to the PGA.

Here's a bit more about Bryson himself.

FUCK THIS GUY FOR REAL UGH there's a real cognitive dissonance between literally hating this guy's guts and still engaging with golf rpf. If you cannot do it I do not blame you. I don't know why I'm doing it. He is not Just a republican, he has played golf with Trump several times. He was invited on stage during a victory speech after Trump won the last election. He was appointed to the making sports more transphobic council. Killing him with my mind.

Anyways aside from that sometimes wears a fuckass flat cap instead of a normal hat and has been committed to this bit for years. Has a pretty popular youtube channel where he does challenges and stuff, like trying to make a hole in one over his fuckass house and breaking 50 with different guests. Is known for being super picky about his gear, all of his clubs are custom. Also known for being able to drive the ball really fucking far. Won the US Open twice for his only major wins. Said he would still be playing on the PGA Tour literal days before he ended up defecting to LIV. I haven't really had the stomach to learn much more about him tbh <3

Golf is an interesting sport in that you play the course instead of your competitors, and whoever plays the course better wins. As such, you don't get the moments that come from direct competition, but they do have some interesting competitive interactions.

2024 US Open: Rory and Bryson are both at the top of the leaderboard for the whole event, but going into the fourth and final round, Bryson is at a -7 and in the lead while Rory is a -4 and tied for second. Rory at one point is -8 overall for the solo lead but bogeys the last three holes to finish -5, whereas Bryson goes +1 in the round for a final score of -6 and wins the event. Rory had to sit and watch Bryson save par to win. For those who enjoy some canon divergence, Rory had filed for divorce about a month before the event and withdrew the divorce like two days before the event. Do with that what you will.

Crypto.com Showdown: A sort of PGA versus LIV exho where Rory was paired with Scottie Scheffler and Bryson was paired with Brooks Koepka. There were three different competitive formats over 18 holes, and Rory and Bryson played singles against each other. Bryson sucked ass while Rory was very hot, and the PGA guys dominated. During warmups, there was mild trashtalk, with Rory saying something about Bryson taking the US Open from him and Bryson responding that Rory had done it to himself.

2025 Masters: Since Rory was leading and Bryson was in second after the third round, they were paired together to play the final round. Rory has said he was completely focused on his own golf and that is what allowed him to finally win the thing. Bryson fell to finish tied for fifth. Afterwards, he was asked in media about if Rory had talked to him at all, and he was a bit bitchy when he said no, Rory had completely ignored him the whole day.

There may be more, but I haven't looked far enough to find them because there are So Many Events and it's a lot harder to find information on where two guys intersect during a golf tournament than just looking up a h2h.

The Dynamic

Imo, there's a lot you can build on from what I've laid out. There's the PGA versus LIV dynamic, which is especially interesting given the fact that Rory has put a lot of time and effort into doing administrative work for the PGA, and there's also a lot of push and pull between them just due to regular competitiveness. There's quite a bit of room to work with regarding how and why they would get to the point where Bryson owns Rory's tits, which I do feel is a core tenant of their relationship even if it exists within somebody else's rpf and not canon, and also how and why their relationship might collapse, because it's also compelling when they're both too similar and too different to function long term. Especially when Rory is canonically not great at relationships. I hinted at some aspects of one possible flavor of their relationship in the very bad porn I wrote.

Alternatives

In my research, I have not just studied these two guys, but some other characters as well. I will introduce you to two of them!

This is Scottie Scheffler! The current world number 1, he has been absolutely goated insane the last two seasons to like Jannik Sinner levels. A fan of all Dallas sports. Has gentle giant vibes but did get arrested with several charges one of which being assaulting a police officer, though charges were dropped and it was called a misunderstanding. Sometimes gets existential about the hollowness of winning on tour, would quit golf at the drop of a hat. Devout Christian but idk if he's weird about it or not, he seems chill though.

Regarding his relationship with Rory specifically, lots of mutual respect there as the world 1 and 2, they played together at the exho I was talking about earlier, since he won the Masters in 2024 he gave Rory his jacket this year, they do a lot of Taylormade videos together if you wanna get into it.

This is Tommy Fleetwood! He's consistently a top 10 in the world player and has been really hot recently, finally won his first title on the PGA tour at the FedEx Cup which was crazy, though he has won on other tours before. Won silver in Paris. Recently started a YouTube channel, he's trying to learn how to golf left handed. Fairway Jesus. Iirc his wife is like 23 years older than him and was his manager or something similar when he was starting out professionally. Idk he's pookie sorry!!

Upcoming Events

The next major event that I will be observing for rpf fodder is the Ryder Cup, which happens at the end of September. It's being massively hyped up, and while there are many interesting goings-on, for our purposes here Rory and Tommy will both be on Team Europe while Bryson and Scottie will both be on Team USA. I have also heard they're doing a Team Rory versus Team Scottie event thing where they'll be competing in different challenges in December I think.

My Research

This is functionally my bibliography in case you want to see what I have been seeing. It's lots of golf be warned but also mostly golf challenges and talking so it's not quite the same.

Tommy Fleetwood fits Rory McIlroy for a driver

Scottie Scheffler existentialism set to midwest emo

Playlist of videos+shorts from the PGA v LIV exho

DeChambeau post-Masters media

Rory's response to Bryson's post-Masters comments

Masters 2025 Green Jacket Ceremony

Team Taylormade banter

More Team Taylormade banter

Honestly most of the challenges from within the last two years on the Taylormade youtube channel have fun little nuggets of characterization in them but I'm not linking all of them, here's a fun driver swap one though

Tommy Fleetwood youtube channel

Bryson DeChambeau youtube channel

Rory McIlroy on a podcast

Conclusions

Golf RPF is an underresearched area with very little published scholarship. However, I do believe that there is potential here, and I will likely be continuing to engage with it because the brainworms have gotten me. I was going to say because somebody has to, but this is really not necessary, nobody should do this, much less has to.